I love our small, common area bathroom. The only complaint I have is that it is a place in the house where having a window is not an option. Our neighbors and friends inspired us to swap our bathtub for a double shower and glass doors, which at the very least makes the bathroom appear larger. While I’ll miss my Eiffel Tower-themed shower curtain (the bathroom has a Francophile motif), it’s good to have the depth that was lacking before.

It turns out the enclosure also comes in handy for separating dogs when we’re feeding them too!

We even considered making our primary bathroom walk-in shower much bigger by getting rid of the adjacent tub, but then someone reminded me that the resale value of the house would be affected. While I can’t fathom moving at this point, it also occurred to me that when I have grandchildren visit, they’ll need an actual bathtub to bath in, so we are leaving well enough alone. The bathtub in the primary bath is actually amazing and has huge windows, so it’s worth the sacrifice to have the primary single walk-in shower remain the size it is.

We used a company that does these bathtub-to-shower replacements with kits that are pretty universal, but it turned out that we had a protruding pipe that needed us to work around it. Fortunately, our handyman was able to come up with a solution that worked. He bent the pipe from the dryer in the adjoining laundry room a bit inward which barely changed the volume of the exhaust and then they were able to put the shower piece in as planned.

As it turns out, we often prefer to shower in the much larger shower in the small bathroom now. It has more modern fixtures, which make it convenient as well.

This stage of the renovation is before the vanity is replaced.